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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Executions jump in 2011, driven by Middle East: Amnesty

March 27, 2012

LONDON (Reuters) - The number of executions carried out around the world
jumped last year, largely due to a surge in use of the death penalty in Iran,
Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

The rights group said at least 676 people were executed in 20 countries
in 2011 compared with 527 executions in 23 countries in 2010, a 28 percent
increase.

Confirmed executions in the Middle
East rose by almost 50 percent last year to 558, it said in an annual report on
the death penalty.

Methods of execution used around
the world included beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.

However, Amnesty said China
executed more people than the rest of the world put together. Data on the death
penalty in China is a state secret and Amnesty International no longer
publishes a figure for Chinese executions, but it said they were in the
thousands.

Salil Shetty, Amnesty's
secretary-general, said that when Amnesty was launched in 1961 only nine
countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes, whereas last year
only 20 countries carried out executions.

"It's a very important
success story," he told Reuters, adding that the downside was that "a
few countries continue to practice it in large numbers."

At least 1,923 people are known to
have been sentenced to death in 63 countries in 2011, down from 2,024 in 2010,
Amnesty's report said. At least 18,750 people were under sentence of death
worldwide at the end of 2011, including 8,300 in Pakistan, it said.

After China, most executions last
year were carried out in Iran, where at least 360 people were put to death
compared with at least 252 in 2010, Saudi Arabia (at least 82 executions in
2011 compared with at least 27 in 2010), and Iraq (at least 68 executions
compared with at least one), Amnesty said.

They were followed by the United
States, with 43 executions in 2011 down from 46 a year earlier, and Yemen, at
least 41 executions in 2011 down from 62 officially reported in 2010.

The United States was the only
country in the Americas and the only member of the Group of Eight leading
economies to execute prisoners in 2011, something Shetty described as
"very shameful."

BELARUS ALONE IN EUROPE

Belarus was the only country in
Europe and the former Soviet Union countries to carry out executions in 2011
when it put two people to death. No executions were recorded in Japan last year
for the first time in 19 years.

Shetty said the two biggest
practitioners of the death penalty in the Middle East, Iran and Saudi Arabia,
were "yet to be touched" by the Arab Spring that has swept the
region.

Violence in countries such as
Libya, Syria and Yemen made it particularly difficult to gather information on
the use of the death penalty, the report said.

In one country in the vanguard of
the Arab Spring, Tunisia, Amnesty said it had been assured by interim President
Moncef Marzouki, a former Amnesty "prisoner of conscience", that he
was committed to abolishing the death penalty. Nobody has been executed in
Tunisia since 1991, and last year, for the first time since 2008, no new death
sentences were handed down.

Amnesty said that in addition to
the 360 executions officially acknowledged in Iran last year, information from
credible sources suggested there were at least 274 other executions. More than
three-quarters of executions there were for drug offences, it said.

"Iranian activists have
expressed their fear that the government may use the cover of its 'war on
drugs' to execute political opponents," it said.

The Iranian authorities continued
to execute political prisoners, and to use the death penalty as a tool against
minorities, it said.

The tripling of executions in
Saudi Arabia last year reversed a downward trend of recent years, Amnesty said.

"Hundreds more people are
believed to be under sentence of death, many of them foreign nationals
convicted of drugs offences. Most of the prisoners did not receive a fair trial
conforming to international standards," it said.

In 2011 Saudi Arabia applied the
death penalty to offences ranging from murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping to
sorcery and drugs-related crimes, the report said.

In Iraq, most death sentences were
imposed on people convicted of belonging to or involvement in attacks by armed
groups, including murder, kidnapping, rape or other violent crimes, Amnesty
said.